


Hi, Honey! Did You Ever Love Me?

by ReelingReverie



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Compulsory Heterosexuality, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Dark, Established Relationship, F/F, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, My First Fanfic, Oneshot, Smoking, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReelingReverie/pseuds/ReelingReverie
Summary: Nora reflects on her marriage from before the war, and opens up to Piper about her past.
Relationships: Female Sole Survivor/Piper Wright
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	Hi, Honey! Did You Ever Love Me?

Snippets of an unfamiliar male voice gave Piper pause as she approached the house. “…great of a mother you are..”

She’d been looking for Nora and had eventually asked Preston.

“She’s in her house,” He’d called down from the turret near the bridge at the entrance to Sanctuary.

“No, I just checked our place, she’s not there.”

“Oh, no, I meant…” Preston had paused his scanning of the horizon and had gestured to another Minuteman to take his post before coming down to speak to Piper. He had lowered his voice, hefting his laser musket to his shoulder uncomfortably. “No, I mean her old one, from… before? It’s the one directly across the street from the garage.”

The door was ajar, and she cracked it open further. She could see Nora sitting with her back to the entrance in a rickety chair. A quick scan showed that it looked much the same as any of the other houses in Sanctuary… Except this one wasn’t cleared. The useless kitchen appliances still hugged the wall, hulks of the precious steel Nora was always scavenging. A weather-beaten sofa still faced a dead television. The whole place might have been in the same state as the day after the bombs fell.

The man’s voice continued, more distinctly now. There was no one else in the room. Piper discerned the light crackle of feedback peppering his words, and she understood- a holotape. “…even so, I know our best days are yet to come.”

Piper moved to enter. The ancient hinges squealed an alarm, startling Nora out of her reverie. She stopped the tape and jumped to her feet, hand at her holster.

“Just me. I should’ve knocked. I can leave-“ Piper knew she was intruding. She may be nosy as hell, but she knew this was too far. This was a place as frozen in time as Nora had been.

Nora had relaxed the moment she’d seen it was Piper. Her voice came out thick. “No, no, you’re fine. Actually… could you come sit with me?”

Piper nodded, crunching across the debris, carefully stepping over a trifold flag in its shattered case. She saw the tracks of a couple tears in the dust on her partner’s cheeks, and she silently reached out to take her hand as she took up a seat across from her. Nora glanced up and gifted her a smile before letting her gaze drop back to the Pipboy on her arm. Piper coached herself internally before speaking, _Remember, questions are okay, but no interrogating. You can do this._

“We’ve… talked about what it was like before. What the world was like.” Nora nods, so she goes on, “But we’ve never… really talked about _your_ life from before. Do you want to?”

Nora nodded, massaging the leather of Piper’s glove mindlessly. “You know when you just want to punish yourself? You can’t keep from sucking on the bitterness like- like probing a sore tooth?” She laughed uneasily and ran her free hand through her short hair. “Sorry, that was stupid, I just-“

“Shhh. Yeah, I get you Blue. I get it. Can’t afford to make the trip to my old home as often as I wanna sulk, but… I got some of my dad’s stuff. Guess we all got our rituals.” Even under their armor, in the middle of their fortified settlement, she felt they were both so naked, so vulnerable in this moment.

“Yeah. This is mine; I sit here. I don’t, um. I don’t go down the hall.” She looked away as she gestured over each shoulder, “Last doors on either side. Room on the right was Shaun’s, one on the left was ours.”

Piper offered, “His name was Nate, right?”

“Yeah. This was…” She tapped the plastic on her arm. “Him. He left it for me. Codsworth gave it to me.”

“You miss him?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

This threw Piper a bit- she’d meant it more as a statement, a guess at what Nora was feeling. She couldn’t keep the incredulous tone out of her voice as she blurted out, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, yes of course I miss him. He was my husband, the father of my child, my best friend, really, but… I don’t miss living with the lie. I mean, I don’t think I ever loved him.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Uh, you’ll probably like me a lot less after this.”

Piper gave Nora’s hand a squeeze, and whispered, “Not possible, but sure. Go on.”

“You gotta understand that in some ways, the wasteland is better than before. No one bats an eye over someone being…” She motioned back and forth between Piper and herself, grasping for words.

“Queer?”

“…Yeah. Look, we were advanced when it came to technology, but socially? Not so much. Hell, I didn’t even know the _word_ for when girls were-“

“Lesbian?”

“Heh. Yeah. You have such a way with words.” She offered a tired sarcastic smile.

“Need to, to run a newspaper.”

“Well, the way I learned the word… Kinda messes with your head to finally see two women kissing, and… well… It was in my dad’s porn collection.” It eased the knot in Piper’s chest to see the little genuine grin on Nora’s face at the embarrassing memory. “A kid’s brain makes associations. I just made the unfortunate connection that this was an object for sex, and it had already been ingrained in me that sex and masturbation was _bad_ and _wrong_ , _especially_ for girls… So, lesbians were therefore also _bad_ and _wrong._ Different reasoning from why everyone else hated us, but oh well.”

“Oh no, that makes perfect sense! I actually have an old novel about how the fetishization of queer persons in media negatively impacts-“ Piper caught herself, and tugged at her scarf self-consciously. “I- I’ll tell you another time. Let you borrow it.”

“I’d love that, actually.” Nora added softly, before continuing her story.

“Skip a few years of me being in denial, hoping, praying, wishing that I wasn’t a bad person, throw in learning everyone else’s stupid reasons for hating gay people, and I was a mess.

“Nate… We knew each other since we were little kids. We were neighbors and grew up together. Right around the time I started to realize I was one of these bad awful people, I also noticed that he liked me. He was so sweet, always staying by my side even while I was depressed all the time. I’d come to accept that it was the truth, that I was a lesbian, and that it wasn’t something I could change. But I didn’t really _understand_ it. I just thought, ‘Okay, this is a condition I live with.’ Like I was an… alcoholic who just needs to avoid situations where I could get drunk. I thought I’d live my whole life never acting on it. In the middle of lying to myself, I dragged him into it. I deluded myself, thought it was kind or something. Give him what he wanted, even if it wasn’t real.

“We got married right before he went off to war and I went off to college. Guess I was just forcing myself to do it before I lost my chance with a man that I wouldn’t just be able to stand, but also be happy with. Marriage was always something I wanted. Having a kid was always something I wanted. I was just always disappointed it wasn’t with someone I loved.

In the pause, Piper gently leaned in, “Now, I’m not trying to invalidate what you’re saying, and I may be off the mark, but… Love doesn’t have to be sexual to be real.”

Nora considered her words for a moment, and nodded. “You’re right, of course. I guess I did love him, just not romantically.”

Nodding, Piper gestured for Nora to continue.

“I regretted it so much. I couldn’t bear the guilt of wearing the ring, couldn’t bear the guilt of not wearing it. He’d write me these long love letters all the time from wherever he was stationed. It didn’t surprise me any that he’d left me this holotape. He was always so good at expressing himself.

“I tried to focus on my studies. Finally, the first semester of my junior year, I broke. I did something I’d regret even more than the marriage.”

Nora had slipped off the fingerless glove, started tracing the lines of Piper’s palm. She always did it to soothe herself, and Piper loved when she did it- even if it was in her worse moments.

“I had to be sure. See if it was all in my head. Maybe I just needed to ‘get it out of my system.’ So, I did some research, found _that_ part of town, and… I went. The bar was loud, not very clean. Smoke made it hard to see or breathe. The band was… kind of shit. The liquor was piss to go with it. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to enjoy myself. I’d been working so hard to walk the straight and narrow, never give into this side of myself. Like, to me, it all went hand-in-hand. Chems, alcohol, prostitution, being queer… You couldn’t be part of ‘that lifestyle’ and be a good person.

“Guess I looked real out of my element. What was it you called it? That fish out of water look? Well, this girl could see that in me a mile off. Everyone there probably could. She bought me a drink, started giving me pointers. Started explaining the lingo. Played twenty-questions to see if I was more butch or femme.

“Well? Which were you?” Piper cocked her head, mocking her own interviewer voice.

Nora rolled her eyes. “Femme presenting, but butch at heart. Have you _seen_ how much carpentry and engineering I do?”

Piper couldn’t help but giggle, and feigned surprise. “Wait, _you’re_ responsible for these hideous shacks? At least put a coat of paint over all this rust!”

“What, and paint the whole place green as the wall in Emerald City?”

Piper paused for a second too long, and Nora started laughing. “Oh, come on! You can’t be serious. You’re crazy as Abbot.”

Shaking her head, Nora resumes, “That whole evening, that feeling was gone. That I had to fake being something I wasn’t. That I had to be on a knife’s edge. I even… forgot about Nate for a while. I wasn’t thinking about how I was betraying his trust.

Nora paused in her story, gathering her thoughts. They watched the haphazard shadows creep across the cracked and scattered linoleum squares. It was hardly private; huge pieces of walls were gone; the windows held no glass, the back doorframe held no door. But it felt so isolated. Apart from the rest of Sanctuary.

“We were both drunk by the time we left. We stumbled out into the alley, and… I didn’t even know her. Didn’t even like her beyond seeing her as drunk-one-night-stand material. Can’t remember her name for the life of me. That really makes it all worse. The least I could do was have the decency to remember her fucking _name._

“Before all this, before waking up to the wasteland, I never really… fought. Never seen people really fight, never seen someone get hurt. Never seen someone die. Nate never talked about what happened while he was in combat. I was so… innocent.

“I thought they’d just rough us up at worst. We weren’t even doing anything. I don’t know if it was the area, or how we dressed, maybe- maybe we were doing something. They wouldn’t have done something like that if- if we weren’t asking for it. Right? I can’t remember, but I do remember just how cool and fresh it felt to be outside after the heat and cigarette smoke inside, and that relief of quiet after the door slammed behind us, dulling the drums and bass. It could have been anything from walking too close together to- Hell, I might have been hanging off her arm for all I know, I just can’t fucking remember what came before the shouting.

“I can still hear the sound of her skull hitting the pavement. But… I never saw it. She told me to run, like she knew. She saw them before I did, knew what they were going to do. She was used to this. She’d probably lost friends, maybe partners like this. She shoved me _real hard_ and said to run. Run and don’t stop. Don’t scream for help. No cops. Just run and don’t look back.

“So I did. …I… Checked the papers for weeks. No reports of anyone getting jumped in that area. No mention of a murder. Finally worked up the courage to check that alley. There was a bloodstain, but she wasn’t there. No… body. Swept up with the rest of the trash. I’m certain she died that night, but I’ll never ever know for sure. Couldn’t bring myself to go into the bar ever again. Or any other one.

“I was a lawyer in that life. But there’s a better chance of getting justice out here in the wasteland than back then for that kind of murder.”

Piper didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if she _should_ say anything. Finally, she offered, “You know… you know now it wasn’t your fault, right? Wasn’t… either of your faults?”

Nora released Piper’s hand after a reassuring pat; both their palms were lightly sweaty. She’d started simply holding her hand at some point.

Reaching into her jacket, she withdrew a cigarette carton. She took her time, the soft _chff chff_ of the lighter filling the silence. “I… I know that, logically. It just gets to me sometimes. Y’know.”

Piper nodded, head on her hand, leaning on the table, taking in the sight of her girlfriend. “Yeah, Nora, I do. I really do. It’s such a stupidly normal part of how the brain works and I wish it wasn’t.”

Nora touched the cigarette to her lips, then stopped. “Thanks. For listening. For helping me with this. I… I’ve never talked about all this to anyone.”

“Of course, Blue. Anytime.”

She finally took a long drag on the cigarette, letting her eyes fall shut as the tip glowed bright.

Finally she leaned back, and the tinge in her face and posture was gone. The moment had passed, and the tension had melted away.

“You know, whatever calm these give me is always balanced back out by the thought that I’m basically smoking dollar bills here.”

Piper gratefully accepted the end of the heavy if much needed conversation. “Oh my god, Blue, not this again! You know, most people are against smoking for health reasons, not because of the caps they’re worth. Okay, okay, fuck it, we’ll chainsmoke it you frugal idiot.”

She took it out of her lover’s mouth and kissed her deeply, tasting the nicotine on her tongue before setting the cigarette between her own lips.

Nora burst out laughing, and coughed a bit too on her own smoke. Dumbfounded and breathless, she asked, “God, how can you make anything sexy?”

“Gotta learn to work with what ya got when you can’t throw on some makeup and slip on some lingerie.” Piper shrugged, offering the remains of the cigarette back.

She accepted it, grinning. “Oh, you _know_ I’ll be scavenging or making some little silk piece for you now.“

Piper slapped her thigh, a blush meeting her red scarf. “You _insufferable-_ Silk won’t have lasted 200 years, silk worms are probably mutated into _killer_ worms, _and_ you’ll have to fight to get me into it!“

Before she even finished her sentence, she knew she’d walked right into Blue’s next line, “I don’t care how hard it is to get you into it, it’s the getting you out of it I’ll be looking forward to.”

Piper, at one of her rare losses for words, shook her head in frustration.

There was a silence, then, “Oh yeah, you were looking for me. Did you need something?”

“Nah, doll. Just wanted to check in on you. Glad I did.” Piper patted her girlfriend’s knee. “Now let’s eat something. I saw you in the shop earlier, so I know you’ve been too focused to. I’ll grill us some of the ragstag the scavengers brought in today."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Any comments and constructive criticism much appreciated.
> 
> I made a lot of assumptions about the pre-war America in the game for this one; a lot of it’s just headcanon. The beginning scenes are set in 2077, but it’s got that 50s vibe throughout, with nuclear families and cold war imagery. I sort of went with the idea that the societal norms hadn’t advanced, so there’d be that rampant homophobia that would have been seen in real 1950’s America.


End file.
